Staples Shares Sink on Sluggish Q4 Results

[1]Shares of Staples (NASDAQ:SPLS[2]) sank more than 6% in Wednesday morning trading after the company posted disappointing fourth-quarter sales[3].

The office supply retailer said that it earned $78.1 million during the quarter, down from $283.6 million last year. Adjusted EPS came in at 46 cents a share. That beat Wall Street forecasts by a penny, Reuters noted.

Quarterly sales climbed to $6.56 billion, up 3% from the same period last year. But that fell short of analysts’ prediction of $6.72 billion in sales.

Same-store sales in Europe fell 9% during the quarter, while North American stores reported a 5% sales decline.

Staples recently began to carry accessories[4] for Apple‘s (NASDAQ:AAPL[5]) popular mobile devices.

Last month, office supply rivals OfficeMax (NYSE:OMX[6]) and Office Depot (NYSE:ODP[7]) announced that they would merge operations[8]. Both companies saw their shares slide about 2% in Wednesday morning trading.